Early Warning System for Massive Layoffs Is Essential

Congress is putting the finishing touches on a watered-down measure that will sometimes require employers to give workers a little advance warning before their jobs are eliminated.

It won’t be much of a law, because it has been badly weakened by innumerable compromises offered to appease almost unappeasable employers and their allies in the White House.

But the fact that it is so weak means that President Reagan might back away from his veto threat, especially if congressional support for the measure remains strong. On the other hand, the President might veto the entire trade bill, which includes the plant closure measure, and that would mean the death of the proposal.

A variety of proposals to protect workers and their communities from the ravages of massive layoffs were considered by Congress over the past 15 years. All died. The latest one has an excellent chance to become law and therefore, inadequate though it is, it deserves to survive.

Perhaps it will be strengthened during the next Administration, which, with little strain, could be more understanding than Reagan about the need for a law to relieve the often disastrous consequences of massive layoffs.

On the other hand, since it is taking so long to get any kind of plant closure measure, even a liberal President may have a hard time getting a better one.

The problem is extensive. Amid the economic restructuring of America, an estimated 2 million workers are thrown out of their jobs each year by plant shutdowns and mass layoffs. To start dealing with the problem, the proposed law would require companies with at least 100 workers to give 60 days’ notice to employees and local community officials when they plan to shut down a factory, move out of town or lay off one-third or more of their work forces for more than six months.

The notification time is far too brief to allow workers and their communities to adequately cope with the impact of massive layoffs, and there are more loopholes in the proposed law than there are in the tax code.

“Faltering companies,” for instance, don’t have to give advance notice if they have a “reasonable belief” that notice itself would cause a shutdown that might otherwise be avoided.

Still, the modest bill has solid support among liberals and many moderates in Congress. By a 60-40 vote, the Senate passed the measure sponsored by Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

The idea isn’t radical. It is common in Europe, and a recent poll showed that 87% of Americans approve of the advance warning system.

Even Reagan, almost all employers and the most conservative members of Congress agree that workers and local communities should be given advance warning of massive layoffs.

But . . .

Many of these same people, including Reagan, say they just don’t want employers to be required by law to give such warnings to their workers.

The foes stubbornly oppose a law that would mandate employers to do what conservative Sen. Dan Quayle (R-Ind.), a principal opponent, concedes “is essential to assist both workers and communities to adjust to the dislocations that are inherent in the transition to a post-industrial economy.”

Reagan, the conservative congressmen and most business organizations sound on this issue like their counterparts did during the decades that Congress was considering laws to prohibit discrimination in employment.

The argument against a Fair Employment Practices Act was that most employers don’t discriminate against minorities or women, and those that do should be educated, not required by law, to act properly.

A popular cartoon in the 1950s showed an employer standing in front of a factory with a help-wanted sign that advised, “colored need not apply.” The caption has the employer pleading with picketing advocates of a fair employment practices law, “Don’t force me, educate me!”

After years of debate, Congress finally decided that too many employers were uneducable, and the Fair Employment Act was passed in 1964. Discrimination has not been eliminated, but it has been curbed. It is no longer socially acceptable, it is illegal and those convicted sometimes pay hefty fines.

In the current debate over the plant closure law, Quayle, speaking for congressional conservatives, echoes the conservatives’ argument in the debate over anti-discrimination laws.

Sure, the senator says, advance notice for massive layoffs is “essential,” but the best way to achieve that laudable goal is “for the American business community to adopt, promote and comply with voluntary standards of business ethics that provide for adequate notice of plant closing and permanent layoffs.”

That voluntary plan hasn’t worked yet for most companies, so legislation is needed.

Many unions and companies in steel, auto, rubber and other industries have negotiated contracts with advance notice provisions, and several of those are far superior to the act pending in Congress.

Federal law should include, as several union contracts do, such things as mandated consultation with workers, their unions and community officials, in addition to simply warning them about imminent mass layoffs so they can prepare for the pink slips.

Such consultations can really help at times, as they did for most of the 2,000 workers at USX Corp.’s Geneva Works in Provo, Utah, after they were told last year that the plant was going to be closed.

A spokesman for the United Steelworkers of America explained that the union put out feelers for prospective buyers of the plant. Some Provo investors, concerned about the future of the town, formed a company, negotiated a union contract and put the plant back in operation with 1,400 workers.

Those who did lose jobs are receiving reasonably good early retirement benefits or severance pay, and government help in finding and getting trained for new jobs.

An adequate plant closure law itself isn’t enough, although it would end the widespread, cruel practice of telling workers on a Friday that their jobs end when their shift does.

To really help, companies, government and unions have to work together under what is sometimes called an “industrial policy” to make sure that viable companies can survive. This system could assure that assistance is available for the community and the workers and not leave them entirely dependent on the judgment of a handful of corporate executives for their economic survival.

Peacemaker Is Right Person for the Job

In labor-management circles across the nation, Anthony Verdream is known as a peacemaker and one who thinks that “crisis bargaining” is as outmoded as picket line violence between workers and company guards as a way of resolving contract disputes.

Verdream has taken over as president of the Food Employers Council, which represents almost all of this state’s supermarket chains in their dealings with nearly 100,000 workers and their unions.

If Verdream succeeds in bringing harmony to the often tempestuous labor relations in the food industry, he will extend the gains already being made around the country in replacing the traditional confrontational relations between labor and management with cooperation and worker participation in corporate decision-making.

When Verdream was in charge of labor relations at American Can Co. a few years ago, he said in an interview for this column:

“I don’t know where all of this (drive for workplace democracy) is going to stop, if it ever does. But I know one thing: Relations between workers and their employers are never going to go back to where they were in the past, and in time most American corporations will really be sharing decision-making powers with their workers and giving them a dignity they’ve never known before.”

Verdream’s ideas will be put to the test here. Food industry mergers and acquisitions--many very hostile--seem to be coming as frequently as the common cold and causing some turmoil in the industry that has already cost many jobs and could cost many more.

But more important, Verdream is coming into an industry that historically has been marked by heated labor disputes.

Another tradition has been crisis bargaining, furiously debating contract issues until the last second of contract deadlines in the expectation that one side or the other will collapse, exhausted by around-the-clock talks, and make a final concession.

Verdream wants year-round, almost collegial consultations with workers and their unions to “find mutually acceptable solutions to mutual problems.”

He says he is ready for his job. But are the supermarket owners who hired him to head their council and their union counterparts ready for Verdream?

If they are wise, they are.